Apple this week: more blame than biscuits

iPad 3
It's been a rather interesting week for Apple

Running Apple must be a double-edged sword, we reckon.

On the one hand the world's geeks worship you and you've enough cash to buy really nice biscuits, but on the other you keep getting the blame for other people's mistakes.

First up there was Path, the hotly tipped social-networking app. When it emerged that the app was surreptitiously copying users' entire address books to its servers, the row reached the giddy heights of the US Congress - although asking Apple to explain Path's actions is rather like demanding B&Q takes responsibility when somebody whacks you with a plank of wood.

But it wasn't all bad

Apple, of course, is thinking a lot about tablets because it's gearing up for the launch of the iPad 3, while it also took the opportunity to preview OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion this week.

Amid rumours that it's testing an eight-inch iPad - the launch of which is scoring a low "it's possible" on our trademarked rumour-o-meter because Apple tests all kinds of things all the time without necessarily turning them into shipping products - we're pretty sure that the iPad 3 will be launched on 7 March with a retina display.

A new, quad-core processor is probable but not definite, and if the rumoured 4G/LTE model is incoming then we'd expect a significantly more powerful battery to cope with 4G's notorious thirst.

Here in the UK we'll get the battery but not the radio: at the time of writing, Brits have more chance of connecting via tin cans tied with string than they have of spotting a 4G network in the wild.

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